Sir James Dyson plans to invest £250m in the expansion of his company headquarters in Wiltshire, creating jobs for 3,000 engineers

Under the plans, Sir James will double the size of his base in Malmesbury and triple the number of engineers he employs. It would mark the largest expansion in the company’s history.

Dyson’s research and development (R&D) facility has been based in the Wiltshire town for 20 years, and seen the development of hugely successfully products including vacuum cleaners and fans. It currently boasts 1,000 engineers.

The new “technology campus” will feature research and development laboratories split over four buildings. Chris Wilkinson of Wilkinson Eyre, the architect who designed Dyson’s current headquarters, has been drafted in to create the Malmsbury building.

“It will be set into the ground with lots of trees planted around us. You won’t be able to see us from anywhere,” Sir James, who famously keeps security very tight, told The Telegraph. “We’ve also negotiated a buffer zone so that houses won’t be built too close to us.”

The company has been working on plans for the new site for the past two years and is close to securing planning permission. “If that goes ahead, we hope to build it by 2015,” he said. “We would also like to be well on the way to our 3,000 engineer target by then. But we need help from the Government to make that happen.”

“I’m begging the Government for more support,” he added. “A grant to help students pay their fees would be an easy and obvious thing to do.

“I would also give proper salaries to people who stay on at university to do postgraduate research,” he continued. “They only get £7,000 to £10,000 a year. That’s a pittance if you’ve been an undergraduate for four years.”

The talent shortage in the UK has been exacerbated by a change in immigration law that prevents foreign postgraduate engineers from staying in the UK after completing their studies, he claimed.

“Only 10pc of engineering postgraduates are British. They all get kicked out at the end of the course because [immigration minister] Damian Green refused to give engineers an exception. These are Anglophiles who could be contributing to our economy. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Sir James is keen to keep his R&D headquarters in the UK because of the calibre of our academic institutions. “We have established close links with universities and have created a really exciting pipeline of new products,” he explained. “We have lots of top-secret plans that look as much as 25 years into the future.”

“We want to expand and produce new products,” he added. “We’ve got to do it somewhere. We either do it here or in Malaysia and Singapore. It all depends on whether we can actually find all the engineers we need.”

It will not be impossible to find an additional 3,000 if the Government makes engineering a more attractive career choice, said the entrepreneur.

“We really need the government to take up the cudgels on this,” he said. “As a country, we need an extra 87,000 engineers a year to meet demand.”

“There’s no shortage of engineers in the Far East,” he added. “40pc of all graduates from Singapore University are engineers. Even the Philippines produces twice as many engineers as us. Either we expand here or we will be forced to do it in the Far East, which would be a real shame.”

The company reported a turnover of £1.3bn in 2012 with profits of £364m.